The Kids Are Alright

The past few days have been all about the youngins.

On Thursday, I went to Philly as part of the Free Library's Field Family Teen Author Series where I spoke with two sessions of three classes of high school seniors. It was pretty awesome -- especially considering how anxious I was about the event beforehand.

I wasn't sure how prepared/formal I needed to be so I peppered my contact at the Free Library with too many emails I'm sure. In the end, I decided to bring some visuals. I figured if I bored the kids out of their skulls, they would have something else to focus on for the hour session I had with them.

My fretting turned out to be unnecessary. While the slide show of images looped via the projector, I spoke briefly about my inspiration for Powder Necklace and read a tiny excerpt. When I looked up after reading, no one was sleeping. LOL. Then I opened it up for Q&A. I was delighted to find the kids had not only read the text, but they'd read it closely.

One of the first questions I got in the second session was something like "So, do you still keep in touch with the dude your mother sent you to Ghana for messing around with?" :-) I also got: "Did you really have to cut all your hair off?" Followed by, "Your hair didn't look that bad." Some of the questions yielded important tangential discussions about the "Black" story (the black story is not only African-American, it's African, Afro-European, Caribbean...too); survival ("Did you really drink brown water?" One student asked. "I could never do that." His friend sitting next to him noted, "You would if you didn't have a choice.") Needless to say the Q&A was my fave part.

After the questions we posed for pics. "Are these pictures going on Facebook?" "No," their teacher assured. (Hence, no pics of the kids.)

On a high from Thursday's success, I went to Poughkeepsie on Friday to do a session with a 4th grade class from Krieger Elementary in Poughkeepsie, NY. Staring at the wide-open faces of these miniature people, I suddenly feared an expletive would fly out of my mouth causing the three parents on chaperone duty to escort me up the stairs of the Vassar College bookstore where the event was held. But again my fears were for naught.

Leaning on the workshop leadership training I got as a mentor with Girls Write Now, I led the kids through an "Ice breaker" exercise that totally warmed them and me up. They shared with each other where they were from and one thing no one knows about where they come from which became the perfect jumping off point for discussing the dangers of making assumptions about people and as a result being disrespectful and insensitive. The kids were immensely, enviably honest as they shared from their hearts -- and they were totally up on their vocabulary words. "Do you guys know what 'murky' means?" Yeeeesss, they chorused. "Know what 'assumption' means?" "It's like guessing, right?" Yes! They were great. And they got even better during the Q&A session.

Their little hands shot up and they started firing questions at me: "How old are you?" (They were shocked to here I was more than two decades older than them. One kid generously said I looked 15. That young man is going straight to the top if I have anything to say about it.)

"In Ghana did you get a lot of presents for your birthday? What kind?"

"In Ghana did you ride on horses?"

"What did you wear?"

"What did you eat?"

"You were bald?!"

They were adorable. It all ended too fast. The good news is I got to catch up with a great friend from college who works at Vassar now, and meet her gorgeous little girl too.

Today, I returned to the Valley Stream Borders Books in Green Acres Mall for an in-store signing. Many a parent was corralling his/her kids through the pre-Black Friday semi-calm before the storm so I had to make my pitch fast as younger kids alternately squirmed out of their parents' grasps or launched into the store for the fantasy books on display. In many cases, parents would ask their older kids if my book sounded interesting. If they nodded yes, I was in; if not, they'd sashay away. LOL. It was great fun.